Quotes of the Day

It was a role Sharon Stone hadn't played quite so dramatically before, or in front of such an influential audience. At a plenary session on fighting poverty last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Stone listened as Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates described how simple bed nets treated with insecticide can protect poverty-stricken Africans from malaria-bearing mosquitoes. Leading off the question-and-answer session, the star of Basic Instinct and Casino turned bed nets into an immediate cause. She pledged $10,000, then turned to the élite group of politicians, businessmen, celebrities and journalists in the hall and asked that they contribute, too.

There was a murmur of interest, consternation and a little embarrassment over her grandstanding. "Would anyone else like to stand up and help? Just stand up! Stand up and people will take your name," Stone urged, her hand raised above her head like an evangelical preacher. A man behind Stone stood up and offered $50,000, and slowly, tentatively, others stood, too. Within about 10 minutes, 35 people rose around the packed auditorium to make donations, as an aide bustled around the hall collecting business cards. The session chairman, U.S. Senator Bill Frist, announced later that $1 million had been collected for the fight against malaria. It was an impressive example of how quickly a Hollywood star can bring much-needed funds — and attention — to an important cause. "These were people with a lotta cash," Stone said that evening. "I thought, 'I really have to get it now,' and that's why I made an ass of myself."

At this year's World Economic Forum (WEF), the power of celebrity kicked some passion into the wonky work of saving the world, showing how fame and sex appeal can work as well for humanitarian causes as it does for selling movies. Now in its 35th year, the WEF has long since outgrown its origins as a strictly business event; the smattering of cultural figures in recent years more than tripled in number this year to include not only Nobel prizewinners like Elie Wiesel and Nadine Gordimer, but also film stars including Gerard Depardieu, Carole Bouquet, Richard Gere, Chris Tucker and popular musicians such as Bono, Lionel Richie and Peter Gabriel. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider star Angelina Jolie, Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (unhcr), sees the role of celebrities as throwing a spotlight on problems that might otherwise be ignored. At a cocktail reception in Davos, Jolie, 29, mesmerized a crowd including executives from multinationals with her account of a visit to refugees in Cambodia. "They'd faced the Khmer Rouge, genocide, starvation, years in refugee camps," Jolie said. "And then there were the land mines." Yet she described how this ravaged group, many of whom had lost arms and legs, managed to build five houses in two weeks. "These are the most capable people I've ever met in my life," she said. Many had lumps in their throats when she was through.

Emotion can, of course, be fleeting. The $1 million Sharon Stone raised is just a fraction of the $4 billion that Gates says is needed to eradicate malaria. Celebrities, like the world as a whole, can have short attention spans. For Jolie, commitment is the key to making a difference. "If [celebrities] are going to speak up, we have to know what we're talking about," Jolie told Time. "We have to make sure we are willing to dedicate part of our lives to this. We shouldn't do it halfway." Jolie practices what she preaches. She pays for her own excursions to the world's misery zones and last year made trips to Sudan and Chad to visit some of the 1.8 million people driven from their homes in Darfur by the genocidal attacks of the Janjaweed militia. "I feel lucky that I stepped into this life and my eyes were opened," she says.

Jolie's work, and that of other celebrities, has opened other people's eyes as well. Their passion seems to connect to and inspire people in a way that most politicians and activists don't. "We've always had cultural leaders at Davos, but we never looked at them as people who could leverage important social issues," says Michel Ogrizek, WEF's head of communications. "Cynics will say it's just p.r., and I'm sure for some famous people it is. But the stars here this year are personally and profoundly engaged."

So why have the stars decided to come out for this year's WEF meeting? Partly it's the issue at hand. Themes of recent Davos gatherings — the Internet, terrorism, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq — didn't lend themselves to the high wattage celebrities can bring. Those issues are all still there, of course, but poverty in the developing world dominated this year's event. "It's a sea change," says Davos attendee Meril James, secretary-general of Gallup International Association, a global polling group. The public response to "the Asian tsunami was just an example of that. There's been a swell of support for eradicating poverty that's out in front of where political leaders are." The international aid community has also become better at deploying celebrities. "It doesn't help to have someone just looking to put something good in their bio," says Shannon Boyd of the unhcr. Getting involved means getting political. "In the late 1980s, when we did We Are the World, it was a lot of work getting musicians together," says pop singer Lionel Richie, co-author of the song that launched the U.S. appeal for the Ethiopian famine. "Now I find I can do more by meeting with major corporations. They have the wherewithal, we have the visibility — it's a partnership." Richie still can't resist using music to get his message across, though. At Davos, he introduced another ditty called One World, which Gere will use to promote safe sex in India.

Of course, big thoughts and grand gestures at the WEF have generated optimistic epiphanies before, and they have often been fleeting. But cynics beware: the celebrities at this year's meeting seem to be in it for the long haul. Bankers, businessmen and politicians haven't yet managed to save the world. Why not let the stars take a shot? "What we need is political will," says Jolie. "And that's what people like me can do: bring [these issues] to the attention of citizens and reinforce the political will." She's a difficult person to ignore.

• JAMES GRAFF | Davos
• Forget bankers and politicians — this year, celebrities ruled Davos